The Jeremy Lin story is real magic

Jeremy Lin story is real magic

TORONTO — Somewhere in the vast and sudden storm that has gathered around Jeremy Lin — an electrical hurricane that whipped out of a clear blue sky, so powerful that at this point nearly everybody has heard about the incredible weather out East — there is a human story, a story about luck, a story about faith, and above all, basketball. Used to be, Jeremy Lin was a footnote to just about everybody. Now, he contains multitudes.

And so Tuesday, when Jeremy Lin and his New York Knicks — they are his, right now — arrived in Toronto, the storm travelled with him. It was announced he is on the cover of this week’s Sports Illustrated. At the packed morning shootaround a journalist of Taiwanese descent proffered a sheet of Year of the Dragon stamps, in honour of his birth year and 2012. Some 4,000 seats had been sold since Friday for Asian Heritage night; it was Toronto’s biggest crowd of the year, and it cheered Lin the first time he touched the ball, and every time he scored.

But once the game started it was just basketball, and Lin looked like an exhausted young man. He was forced to his left, missed shots, turned the ball over five times in the first half. At the other end, Toronto’s Jose Calderon was killing him, splashing jumper after jumper. Oddly, some of the crowd began to boo Lin when he had the ball. People started tweeting that the so-called Linsanity was over. Lin kept grinding — and this turned into a prison-yard game full of contact and falls — but missed four free throws in the fourth quarter alone. The Knicks were down 86-77 with 4:03 left.

But with just over a minute left and New York down three, Lin faked a charging Linas Kleiza out of his socks, drove right at Amir Johnson — who had been blocking shots all night — hung on him in the air, and completed a big-boy three-point play to tie the game at 87. Something was swirling.

And after a Toronto miss, and a late New York offensive rebound, Lin had the ball at centre court with the shot clock turned off, and the crowd stood and roared like the ocean. Lin looked back at Knicks coach Mike D’Antoni. Was he asking if the coach wanted a timeout? “Actually, admitted Lin, grinning a little sheepishly, “I was asking if I could have an [isolation play].” It was his fifth career start. It was the definition of fearlessness. D’Antoni nodded.

And Lin waited, and the crowd howled, and Calderon backed off, and Lin launched a three-pointer that smashed through with 0.5 seconds left. Practically perfect.

In his fifth career start, Lin finished with 27 points on 9-of-20 shooting, 11 assists, eight turnovers, and another chapter in a story that continues to defy credulity. He was asked if he could believe this was happening to him. He smiled again. “No,” he said.

“I’m just glad it went like this so we could calm the Linsanity down a little bit,” cracked D’Antoni, before comically rolling his eyes.

“I can’t really explain it,” said Amar’e Stoudemire, who scored 21 points in his first game with Lin.

Stuff like this is why Jeremy Lin’s existence had become a forensic investigation. How a skinny kid with Taiwanese parents in Palo Alto, Calif., could not procure a college scholarship, got into Harvard, majored in economics and excelled on the court, but went undrafted after four years. How he spent a year on Golden State’s bench, how two NBA teams waived him, how he wound up as New York’s fifth point guard, how he was one Baron Davis injury setback from being set adrift again. How he was sleeping on his brother’s couch when the Knicks ran out of options, threw him out there like bait, and watched open-mouthed as he became a star.

“I would say it’s a miracle just because anytime something like this happens, a lot of stuff has to be put into place, and a lot of it is out of my control,” said Lin, 23, before the game. “If you look back at my story, it doesn’t matter where you look, but God’s fingerprints are all over the place, where there’s been a lot of things that had to happen that I just couldn’t control. And you could try to call it coincidence, but at the end of the day there’s 20, 30 things, when you combine them all, that had to happen at the right time for me to be here. So that’s why I call it a miracle.”

That’s life, of course, and it’s up to you how you explain it. But given Lin’s supernova explosion — he scored more points in his first five pro starts than any player since 1976, after a season and a half’s worth of garbage time — it’s all steeped in significance now.

“Just everything,” said D’Antoni, when asked to name the best part about Lin’s story.

And so the great cultural machine, hungry for wonder, has inhaled every detail. The marketing machine is being cranked into hyperdrive, to the point where his brother’s couch could probably fetch $10,000 on eBay. Lin has become a symbol for Asian-Americans, if a little reluctantly; he always said he was a Christian more than anything, but he is busting stereotypes for how a basketball player can look, and an Asian man can behave.

“We are not Jeremy Lin,” wrote Edmund Lee, an Asian-American, for Capital, a New York-based website. “Rather, the triumphal narrative here is that the rest of the world now has some small clue about our own miscellany, our own idiosyncrasies and beliefs. We are not all Tiger Mom cubs. We are not so uniform and so blind to feeling and emotion and that we can’t swagger and sway. We’re not merely silent strivers. Some of us can dunk and drive and smile like everyone else.”

Indeed, Lin might have loved Steve Nash’s brains and Dwyane Wade’s recklessness, but he had a Latrell Sprewell poster up on his wall at home. He has admitted he was a terrible practice player in high school, getting kicked out once a week for his attitude until a broken ankle at the end of his junior year straightened him out. It’s all irresistible, even to those hardened eyes watching it up close.

“Everywhere I go, it’s no longer about anybody else,” says Knicks centre Tyson Chandler. “I played with some big stars in this league, and it’s all Jeremy Lin questions. But I love it, because he’s an incredible guy. He’s one of the best. You can’t help but love him, and hope the best for him.” When asked if he had ever seen anything like this, Chandler grinned and said, “I don’t think anyone has.”

There is little luck in basketball; it is a ruthless game, a meritocracy, and eventually you are discovered for what you are. There is probably a crash coming; mental exhaustion, death by scouting, a drop from the incredible bar he has set, whatever.

But right now the Jeremy Lin story is about how in a society full of nonsense and noise, of fizz and vapour, of pretty colours and manufactured products, we ache for real magic. Here it is.